


Dead Woman Walking

by Syndal



Category: Kingdoms of Amalur
Genre: One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-12
Updated: 2012-09-12
Packaged: 2017-11-14 02:46:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 506
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/510499
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Syndal/pseuds/Syndal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Waking up dead is better than not waking up at all... right?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dead Woman Walking

She wonders if this is a dream. If it is, it's a terrible one. 

Bone and sinew ache in ways they shouldn't, creaking like they've seen no use in ages. She can't remember a time when she felt so old... In fact, she can't remember much of anything. Her eyelids feel like they're anchored down by weights even the strongest man couldn't lift. She hears voices, so distant and quiet they might be in her head, questioning, bickering, pestering. "Be quiet," she snaps in her mind, the inner voice reverberating off of her skull like the roll of thunder. And then she's falling, fast enough and far enough that she will surely perish when she hits the bottom of whatever chasm she's been tossed into. She doesn't, but when at last her eyes open, she wishes she had. 

It is the smell that finally does it. It creeps into her nose and she _knows_ that smell. Rotten meat and flowing water. Ash and dirt and burning. _Up, up, up,_ her body urges, _up or you'll be rotten, too._ But one must see in order to move, lest they stumble blindly into disastrous things. The sight that greets her, coupled with the smell, is nearly enough to make her retch. Bodies - too numerous to count – litter the floor, a grotesque mound of rotting flesh pillowing her fall. A life saved by death. 

She rights herself from the mountain of corpses, surveying all above and below; a cavern, vast, cold, echoing. There is water too, a great lake of it, lapping at old earth and stone. Muscle soon regains its way, allowing her to leap from her morbid perch, down onto wet earth (she'd rather not know what she just stepped in), and there is light, burning from a great furnace ahead. The ground rumbles and the cavern shakes, sending dust and pebbles to rain down on her as she starts down a narrow path – the only path away from the dead. 

~~~~ 

The little man she saves from certain death is not a man at all. _Gnome,_ she evokes, and this gnome has a name: Encel, the gnome calls himself, and Dead he calls her. The tower shakes with Fae magic, rattling her bones and nearly knocking Encel off his tiny feet. She rights him and he asks her name, but she doesn't know it. She doesn't know anything anymore, save what her muscles remember: dodge, parry, riposte, slash. So many words spill from Encel's mouth so quickly that she can hardly catch them all. Death, second-life, Fomorous Hugues; too much too soon. Too much death and certainly too many Fae. Encel gives her the name Marren, something to call herself until her memory returns (if it ever does), a gift wrapped up in leather and torn cloth, doused in healing potions and Fae blood. "Marren," she says in her head, rolling over the syllables and mouthing it to herself as Gnome and Almain hurry their way from the crumbling tower. She doesn't like it, but it'll do.


End file.
